How did MGA land on Jesus=Yuz Asaf?
MGA and his team referenced a number of orientalist works to support his theory, which under scrutiny carry little weight. Indeed some of these works were based on an alleged discovery by the Russian war correspondent Nicholas Notovitch, who claimed that during his journey through India and Kashmir in 1887 to have found Tibetan scrolls that revealed the unknown life of Jesus in the region (Notovitch, 1894).

These claims by Notovitch were investigated thoroughly by his contemporaries and found to be fraudulent. The first to question this claim was Max Muller, a reputed Indiologist, in an article in 1894 (Muller, 1894). Despite being disproved by those that visited the monastery and took sworn statements from those he had claimed to interview, Notovitch false claims influenced a number of writers. It is not outside of the realms of possibility that Notovitch influenced Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (Beskow, 1983).

Muller is strangely quoted by Ahmad to support his claims in his book, (Ahmad, 1908) despite Muller completely refuting Ahmad’s position. This kind of selective quotation is used by the Ahmadiyya to evidence their claims, often using an obscure combination of different sources of vastly different quality and under scrutiny out of context.

These errors continue when Ahmad quotes the Gospel of Barnabas as evidence for his claims whilst failing to mention that it follows the normative Islamic position that Jesus (Isa AS) ascended to Heaven.

Ahmad’s premise was investigated by “swoon” theorists that held views that Jesus escaped alive and lived for a considerable time after (Podro, 1957). Although refuting his position in relation to Jesus’s travels to India, they were unable to address the recent Ahmadis claims such as those of Khwaja Nazir Ahmad an Ahmadi Imam and writer (Ahmad, 1952). The authors of Jesus in Rome did not have knowledge of original sources to address these claims and merely questioned it from an officially translated version of Khwaja Ahmad’s arguments (Podro, 1957).

In 1957 after the publication of Jesus in Rome, David Lang published “The Wisdom of Balahvar” (Lang, 1957). Lang did not intend on writing a refutation of the Ahmadiyya, but added a postscript to his book after reading Graves and Podro’s publication. Lang’s research was devoted to tracing the history of a Georgian Christian legend, which influenced Shakespeare (Shakespeare, 1596), back to its source in Buddhist writings.

He traces the sources quoted by Graves and Podro, specifically the references from Ahmadi writers. He then evidences that they were transmitted from the Muslim story of Gautama Buddha from the Arabic book of “Balauhar and Budhasaf, which was the prototype to Christian Barlaam and Josaphat legend that he was expertly researching. His sources at the time included a 1000 year old Georgian Text in the Greek Patriarchal library in Jerusalem.

Lang identified that confusion over diacritical markings in the work which was translated into Arabic turned Budhasaf (Bodhisattva) into Yudasaf and even Yusasaf. The grave of Yus Asaf is where Mirza Ghulam claimed Isa AS (Jesus) is buried.

Furthermore the book of Baluhar and Budhasaf in Arabic, one of the sources of the chain of this story suggests the Buddha died in Kashmir. Lang goes on to state that this is another confusion in translation, Kashmir is a mistake and the source it relates to is a place called Kusinara, where he is in fact, more accurately reputed to have passed away.

The Wisdom of Bhaluvar although not intentionally, entirely explains the faults with Mirza Ghulam’s understanding, and those of his followers. It identifies where the false notions came from, compares the different translations from the Bombay Arabic version to Ibn Babuyas (As related in Oldenburgs summary). By evidencing from the original sources prior to Mirza Ghulams claims, which were poorly translated texts, Lang destroys any academic credibility to the Ahmadiyya communities claims. This credibility if only in relation to a historian would be acceptable, but when one claims to be a prophet it adds further weight to evidencing such a claim is false.

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